


Crowley Went Down to Georgia (he was looking for a soul to steal)

by JoyAndOtherStories, wonderingpiper



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Crack Treated Seriously, Established Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens), Fluff, Gen, Includes embedded audio, M/M, Songfic, The Devil Went Down To Georgia, You don't need to know the song, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-17
Updated: 2020-07-17
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:21:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25327702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoyAndOtherStories/pseuds/JoyAndOtherStories, https://archiveofourown.org/users/wonderingpiper/pseuds/wonderingpiper
Summary: The idea, "what if Crowley was the devil who went down to Georgia?" hit and wouldn't go away 'til it was written. Written for the Do It With Style Events Mini-Bang and includes audio!
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 56
Kudos: 105
Collections: Good Omens Mini Bang





	Crowley Went Down to Georgia (he was looking for a soul to steal)

**Author's Note:**

> **A few notes: The idea for the song came from the Charlie Daniels Band song “The Devil Went Down to Georgia.” The whole song is incorporated into the fic. Unfortunately, Charlie Daniels proved to be racist and somewhat unhinged over the years, so this fic is not meant as a tribute to him at all. Also, it’s safe to assume that the original “Johnny” as envisioned by Daniels was a white man, but I don’t really care what Daniels thinks, given the racism. The story works just as well (really better) when Johnny is a Black man. (The story of a poor country white kid who’s talented and goes on to become successful has BEEN done; I mean that’s basically Luke Skywalker.)

_Some years in the future, England, South Downs, a cottage_

“Angel, I have to go to a funeral.”

Aziraphale emerged from the kitchen, looking concerned. “A funeral, my dear?” He reached for Crowley’s elbow.

“Well,” Crowley said, checking the invitation he’d just opened, “a homegoing, apparently.”

Aziraphale nodded knowledgeably. “Was this…someone you were close to, dearest?”

Crowley frowned. “It’s someone I…lost a bargain to, actually.”

Aziraphale was still gazing at him worriedly, so Crowley squeezed his hand reassuringly. “I’m fine, angel. He lived to be”—he calculated rapidly—“gosh, 105. Getting to that age, for a human—feels more like he won, really.” He reflected for a second. “He had a habit of doing that.”

“That’s good, then,” said Aziraphale, still scanning Crowley’s face carefully. “Where and when is the ceremony?”

The ceremony was in America. Georgia. One of those places that nobody’s heard of unless they’re from there. Or unless they were Crowley, in this case.

And it was in two days.

“Oh my _goodness_ ,” Aziraphale exclaimed, picking up items at random in their entryway. “I’ll have to pack very quickly. Do you think we can purchase aeroplane tickets so late, or should we miracle them? Oh dear; I haven’t been to the Americas in ages—what will the weather be like? And—”

“Angel— _angel_ —” Crowley finally managed to interrupt him. “You don’t—y’don’t have to come.”

Aziraphale paused with a baffled frown. “But of course I’ll come with you, darling. I wouldn’t want you to go to a funeral on your own. And besides, that region has _so_ much lovely food.”

Which was how Crowley ended up in an airplane with his husband high above the Atlantic, watching as Aziraphale turned from admiring the receding view of the coast and took Crowley’s hand. “Now dear, do tell me about this friend whose life we’re about to celebrate.”

“Uh,” said Crowley, waving his other hand. “It’s a long story.”

“We have rather a long time,” Aziraphale pointed out.

_90 Years Earlier, United States of America, Georgia, Somewhere between Atlanta and Chattanooga_

Crowley was in a bind.

It had started a week or so ago when he’d been rudely awoken from a perfectly good nap. Not _precisely_ the same nap that he’d flung himself into after that fight with the angel over the holy water—he’d woken up from that in the late ‘20s (the 1920s, something that needed clarification when you’d lived for millennia), discovered that humans had finally developed an effective alternative to horses, and purchased the Bentley. But he’d still been perfectly happy to sleep for another decade or two—or _would_ have been, except that someone Downstairs had gotten angry about a dangerous fiddler in the back of the backwoods of Georgia. Well, dangerous by Hell’s standards, apparently.

By then it was 1930-something. The humans had mucked things up rather significantly since the last time Crowley been awake, and now _he_ was expected to muck about in this Godforsaken—Satanforsaken—forsaken, anyway—place that didn’t even have paved roads. The air felt like he was trying to inhale a wet blanket, and all the insects wanted to eat him.

It had taken him two days to find the fiddler—two days of swatting insects and asking progressively more suspicious humans where he could find “the best fiddle player in these parts.”

Anyway, now he’d found him. And…well.

When he’d been given the assignment, Crowley had heard quite a lot about the charisma of the fiddler, the unnatural talent of the fiddler, the arrogance of the fiddler, and so on. One thing no one had mentioned was the age of the fiddler.

This was a _kid_.

He was fifteen, maybe—a Black teenager with deep brown skin, an easy smile, and a few younger siblings. He spent the daytime working with his family on the farm where they were tenants, and went for his fiddle as soon as he could in the evenings.

Crowley was suddenly very uncomfortable with all the strategies he’d come up with for “make sure he can’t keep pulling souls in the wrong direction, or we’ll get behind on our quota.”

_“You could’ve just…sabotaged his fiddle, couldn’t you?” asked Aziraphale, taking a bite of something that was suspiciously tastier looking than ordinary airline food._

_“Ehhrrgghh…I could’ve, yeah…probably would’ve worked, too—he couldn’t have afforded a new one any time soon. But—nnhhhh—there’s no craftsmanship there. So he doesn’t play because he doesn’t have a working fiddle—doesn’t change the fact that he_ could _still play that well, if he wanted, y’know?”_

_“Of course, dear,” said Aziraphale, patting his knee. The way the angel’s eyes were crinkling fondly told Crowley that he might as well have not bothered with the excuse. Crowley rubbed the back of his neck and very firmly did not think about the word “nice.”_

Crowley lurked. Maybe he could use the fiddler’s youth to his advantage. Young people were easily distracted, right?

Two days later, he was utterly sick of lurking, and running out of temptations. He’d tried girls (none available other than ones the kid had known his whole life), boys (little to no interest), gambling (no money), alcohol (his mama had taught him better), drugs (not as exciting as his fiddle), and—out of desperation—religion (definitely not as exciting as his fiddle).

Crowley was way behind. He’d gotten a very unsubtle message from Beelzebub last night about the time he was wasting on this assignment.

 _Fine_.

He was willing to make a deal.

First he had to make some arrangements, and then he had to find the kid again—it was Saturday evening, and he’d disappeared. Crowley was reduced to wandering through murkily settling twilight—with bugs and…and whatever it was out there in the trees…shrieking so loudly that they could have inspired years of demonic choirs. He finally came across the kid outside an old shed on a hillside, sawing away on his fiddle, nearly drowning out the chorus of horrible, invisible animals that Crowley was fairly sure were stalking him. The kid’s playing was, admittedly, _hot_. It occurred to Crowley that there was a difference between arrogance and justified confidence.

No time for that at the moment, though. He figured he should make an entrance, so he swept off his sunglasses and jumped up on a hickory stump (it was all that was available, alright?)—

“Kid, lemme tell you what.”

The kid swore in a way he certainly wouldn’t have in front of his mama. Crowley nodded approvingly.

“I guess you didn’t know it,” he continued, “but I’m a fiddle player too.”

The kid, who was in the process of backing into the shed, as if that would do him any good, frowned confusedly.

“What?”

“I can play the fiddle,” Crowley repeated. “It’s a…it’s a demon thing.” That was a bit of a stretch. Hell offered Intro to Demonic Musical Instruments courses, but only a few demons ever got past playing Hot Cross Buns on recorders. Crowley, though, had been around for the invention of fiddles—and stringed instruments in general, for that matter. He snapped his fingers, and his own fiddle case appeared in his hands. It would need some tuning—being miracled across the Atlantic wasn’t exactly ideal for string tautness.

“Sure,” said the kid, very warily. At least he wasn’t running away. Assignment or no assignment, Crowley was _not_ about to chase anyone down through a chicken coop.

“Care to take a dare?” Crowley offered. “I’ll make a bet with you.”

“A bet with the Devil?” The kid’s normally cheerful face was shuttered. “Ain’t nobody that stupid.”

“Ehhhh,” Crowley said, remembering a few incidents, “you’d be surprised. Anyway. You play a pretty good fiddle,” he understated wildly, “but give the Devil his due. I’ll bet a fiddle of gold”—he produced one from behind his back—“against your soul. I think I’m better than you.”

The kid gaped at Crowley, gaped at Crowley’s fiddle case, and gaped at the freshly-miracled golden fiddle.

Then he burst out laughing.

“Who’d”—he laughed some more—“who’d want a fiddle made outta gold? That ain’t gonna have any kinda decent sound.”

Fair point. Crowley snapped his fingers again.

“Give it a try,” he said, handing it to the kid with an appropriately demonic smirk.

The kid took it gingerly, plucked one string, plucked another, and automatically began checking its tuning. Crowley rolled his eyes.

“It’s in tune,” he sighed. “I’m not an amateur.”

The kid raised an eyebrow and drew his own bow across the strings. Now both eyebrows shot up. “That’s…that’s a nice tone,” he admitted.

“’Course it is,” said Crowley. “And it’ll keep that tone, too, no matter what. You still have to play well—if you played it badly, you’d just have bad notes with a good tone.”

The kid looked at him dryly. “I can play it just fine.” And he demonstrated, running through snatches of several different tunes, fast enough that Crowley couldn’t catch all of them. Then he pulled it away from his shoulder, looked at it, sighed, and handed it back to Crowley.

“I can’t,” he said, with genuine regret. “People’d think I stole it.”

Crowley thought about that, frowned, and snapped his fingers again. “Okay, kid. Now it’ll look just like an ordinary fiddle to anyone other than you.” He wiggled his fingers and did a thing, letting the kid see the illusory wooden fiddle and the actual golden one at the same time.

“Agh,” said the kid, squinting. “I got it, I got it. You can stop.”

“Sure, kid.”

The kid looked hard at the fiddle, looked hard at Crowley, made a thoughtful noise through his teeth.

“My name’s Johnny,” he said, a touch reproachfully.

“Right, sorry,” said Crowley. “Crowley.” He extended his free hand automatically. Johnny looked at it, raised an eyebrow, and pointedly didn’t take it. “Right,” sighed Crowley, again, and shoved his hand awkwardly into his pocket.

“Crowley?” Johnny repeated. “Not…Lucifer? Or S—”

“Sshhhh shh shh!” Crowley shushed him, shushingly. “Don’t—don’t just go around saying names—believe me, you _don’t_ want him up here.”

“But aren’t you…the Devil?” Johnny queried.

“Ahhehhhgnnh…I’m not _the_ Devil,” Crowley tried to explain. “Just _a_ devil. A humble demonic servant. Well, not humble. That’s a virtue, and I don’t do those.”

Johnny looked at him speculatively. “Alright, _Crowley_ ,” he said eventually, “it might be a sin, but I’ll take your bet.” He flashed his usual grin. Crowley tried not to think too hard about whether he hated or loved that grin. “And you’re gonna regret, ‘cause I’m the best that’s ever been.”

“Ah—oh,” said Crowley. He hadn’t exactly expected to get this far, and he wasn’t sure if he’d wanted to. “Well, _Johnny_ , you—you rosin up that bow, and you’d better play that fiddle hard.”

“’Cause Hell’s broke loose in Georgia,” Johnny said, rosining and still grinning.

“Look, the Devil deals the cards, here,” Crowley said, a little desperately. But Johnny was unbothered. “I mean, if you win, you get this…shiny fiddle—”

“Made of gold, mm-hmm,” said Johnny, with what might have been an eye roll.

“But if you lose,” Crowley said, with emphasis—

“The Devil gets my soul, I got it,” Johnny finished for him.

Crowley sighed and opened up his case. “Fine, I’ll start this show.” He sent fire flying from his fingertips as he rosined up his bow. It seemed appropriate.

“Hey!” Johnny snapped, patting out a spark that had caught on a fraying woven chair.

“Ehhrrnn,” Crowley said apologetically. He dragged his bow across the strings; it made an evil hiss. “Ugh,” he muttered, glaring at it as he tuned, until it sensibly decided that the trip across the Atlantic hadn’t been so bad for it after all.

At that point, his prior arrangements kicked in, and a three-person—well, three-demon—band of Erics popped up to join him. It sounded something like—

[quotharaven](https://soundcloud.com/julia-p-78777793) · [Crowley's Song](https://soundcloud.com/julia-p-78777793/crowleys-song)

_“But that was_ cheating _,” Aziraphale interrupted him, his eyes wide over a glass of wine (again, suspiciously high quality wine for an airplane)._

 _“I’m a_ demon _, angel,” said Crowley, rolling his eyes. “Cheating wasn’t just acceptable; it was encouraged. And besides, they were literally the only demons I could find who could handle a bow without hitting someone with it.”_

_“Well, it hardly seems fair to young Johnny,” Aziraphale sniffed. “He didn’t have the option to have…backup musicians.” He’d learned about backup musicians recently, only a century or so after they’d become a thing._

_“You really don’t need to worry about_ him _,” Crowley said grimly._

Crowley felt as though he put up a good showing. He had 6000 years of human music to draw from. The Erics, thank Satan, didn’t try anything fancy; they stuck to the basic chords they’d learned in Slightly But Not Very Advanced Fiddling; You’re Not That Special So Don’t Go Thinking You Are.

When he finished, Johnny was smiling delightedly. “Well, you’re pretty good, old son!” His eyes were dancing. “But sit down in that chair right there”—he pointed to the chair Crowley had nearly set on fire—“and let me show you how it’s done.”

Crowley sat. So did the Erics, miracling up chairs uninvited behind him.

And Johnny played.

Crowley had thought he had a good sense of Johnny’s talent by then. He realized now, much too late, that what he’d heard so far had only been practice. This was Johnny in full performance mode. His music spread out into the night like fire rippling across the mountainside. Crowley wished Aziraphale were there; he was the one with the words; he’d be able to describe—

Scratch that; he was _not_ thinking about the angel.

Johnny played on.

Crowley recognized a melody every now and then—Fire on the Mountain, House of the Rising Sun, that one about the granny’s dog, the one with the line about chickens in breadpans—but Johnny was well beyond him. He went through folk songs, shifted to blues, moved on to gospel (Crowley felt a few warning tingles in his feet and hoped the kid wouldn’t manage to consecrate the hillside right then and there), and finally headed into tunes Crowley was fairly sure he’d made up on the spot. When he stopped—with a complicated flourish he pulled off with maddening ease—the sky in the east was turning from deep grey to golden pink.

The Erics had the nerve to break into applause—at least until Crowley fixed them with his best your-discorporation-is-imminent glare, and they tactfully wandered off. But when he turned back to Johnny, he bowed his head; he knew that he’d been beat.

Well, he might as well do the thing properly. He gave Johnny an absurdly overdone bow and laid the golden fiddle on the ground at his feet.

Johnny—his burly chest still heaving and his brown skin gleaming in the not-quite-dawn light—didn’t pick it up. “What’s the catch?” he asked instead.

“The catch to what?” Crowley asked in return.

Johnny nodded toward the fiddle. “Don’t seem like a good idea, taking gifts from the Devil.”

“It’s—ehh, it’s not a _gift_ ,” Crowley said. “It’s a prize. Your winnings.”

“And is it gonna…do anything to me, if I use it?”

Crowley blinked at him. “Why would it do anything to you?”

“Seems like it’d be a good trick,” Johnny said slowly, his eyes narrowed, “let me win but give me something that’ll…curse me, or steal my soul anyway, or…something.”

“Oh,” said Crowley. “Errrrehhhnn…I suppose I _could_ do that…but it wouldn’t be very…I mean…you won, fair and square. That would just be cheating.”

Johnny rolled his eyes. “You already cheated, devil,” he said, looking pointedly at where the Erics had sat.

“That wasn’t cheating.” Crowley folded his arms. “We never said we _wouldn’t_ use backup.”

Johnny rolled his eyes harder. He was good at that. Crowley could take lessons.

“Look,” Crowley said, losing patience, “you can leave it on the ground for all I care. But I promise it doesn’t have any…nnnhhh…extra features.”

“Everybody knows the Devil’s a liar,” said Johnny, his expression dry enough that it might have actually sucked some of the moisture out of the air around them (there was plenty of it to go around). But he picked up the fiddle, played a few notes experimentally. He couldn’t hide the gleam in his eyes at the effortlessly superb tone he produced.

“Actually,” said Crowley, hit with inspiration as to how he could salvage this assignment, “I _could_ give it a special feature, if you’ll do me a favor. Fair exchange.”

“What kinda feature?” Johnny asked suspiciously. “And what kind of _favor_?”

“The favor’s pretty simple,” Crowley replied. “I just need you to promise you’ll play…uh…not just _holy_ tunes. Y’know…make sure you mix in plenty of…not-holy ones. So Downstairs’ll stop thinking you’re stealing souls from Hell’s quota.”

Johnny stared at him as if he were daft. “You want me to promise to play…not just church songs,” he summarized slowly.

“Yep,” Crowley said. “Throw in some nice sinful ones. Err… _not-nice_ sinful ones. Ones about…drunkenness, or going fishing instead of working, or…or…stealing goats or whatever.”

The “you’re a nutter” look only intensified. “I already play plenty of that kinda song.”

“I know, I know—shut up!” snapped Crowley, who’d spent the night being treated to most of Johnny’s repertoire. “Just give me something to put in my report. And yes, a promise to a demon is binding, so don’t go breaking it.”

“That won’t change what I play anyway,” Johnny shrugged. “But what kinda feature’re you talking about for my fiddle? I don’t need no special feature to play pretty.”

“I know you don’t. Believe me.” Crowley thought for a few seconds. “Tell you what. What if…when you play, whoever’s around that needs to hear it, will hear it. And remember it.”

Johnny had some impressive eyebrows. Currently they were furrowed tightly as he regarded Crowley. “Whatcha mean, whoever needs to hear it?”

“Nnehhhhnn…you can decide that, I guess.”

“So,” said Johnny, “say if somebody’d had a bad day, and they needed cheering up…they’d hear it if they was around when I was playing?”

“Um,” said Crowley, who’d been thinking more along the lines of talent scouts, “sure. If that’s what you want.”

“Yeah,” Johnny said slowly, “I’d like that.”

“Alright, done,” said Crowley, snapping his fingers. “Now give me your promise.”

Johnny waved the hand that wasn’t holding his new fiddle. “Sure. Can’t play just church songs anyway. I’d get bored.” He tilted his head thoughtfully. “You have to write a _report_?”

“’Course I have to write a report. Hell loves paperwork. Why d’you care?”

Johnny shrugged. “I woulda figured being a devil was more fun. You oughtta be out carousing, late night fiddling, doing whatever you want. Not paperwork.”

Crowley rubbed his face. “Yeah, well. It’s a job. It can’t be all fiddling contests.”

The first sunbeams of the morning crested over a tree-lined hill and lit up Johnny’s face as he let his grin loose. “Well, devil, you just come on back, if you ever wanna try again. I done told you once, you son of a bitch”—he slapped Crowley’s shoulder—“I’m the best that’s ever been.” He paused, and his grin slipped momentarily. “Don’t tell my mama I said son of a bitch.”

“Believe me, I have no intention of telling your mother anything,” Crowley assured him. “And you might try ‘son of a gun’ in future.”

* * *

“And was that it?” asked Aziraphale, nibbling on what had been airline pretzels but had been convinced that they wanted to be, in fact, a high-quality sourdough variety. “You’d finished your assignment, so you headed home?”

“Welllll,” Crowley sighed. “See, the Erics had gone off somewhere, so I had to round them up before they got into trouble. And by the time I found them all, one of them had found out there was a fiddle-playing contest—I mean a human one—the next weekend, and he wanted to enter.”

“I thought you said he could only play a few chords.”

“Yep,” said Crowley. “So we got Johnny to give him lessons in the evenings. Paid him and everything. Turned out the kid was a good teacher—had Eric playing two songs by that next Saturday. I think it was Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, and…something about a weevil.”

“He taught a demon to play Swing Low, Sweet Chariot?” Aziraphale said archly.

“With a straight face,” Crowley said, failing to keep his own face straight. “Eric never knew it was a joke.”

“So you stayed to supervise Eric?” Aziraphale was skeptical. “Did he need that much supervision?”

“Ehhh,” said Crowley sheepishly. “I was a bit…curious…by then. Wanted to see how the contest went.”

“For Eric?” Aziraphale’s eyebrows climbed higher.

“Pfffft.” Crowley waved an arm, forgetting he couldn’t do that on an airplane. Aziraphale snapped his fingers, and the flight attendant’s tray of soft drinks was safely back in place. “He scraped through his two songs and came in last. He got some polite applause that made him happy, though, so I s’pose it was alright. Nah, I wanted to see what Johnny would do.”

“And? Which fiddle did he use?”

“Used the golden one.” Crowley refused to admit that his smile was anything other than demonically-appropriate pridefulness. “Won the contest, of course. Didn’t even play his best, not that anyone noticed. ‘Cept me. Got a cash prize, which got his parents to rethink his hobby a bit.”

Aziraphale was smiling fondly, but his forehead creased in mild concern. “But did you get into any trouble, dear, with…ah…your old bosses? Over the assignment?”

“’Course not, I’m not an amateur. Wrote up a whole report about how the kid would be playing sinful music from now on, and added a whole bit about how many _more_ souls he’d influence our way because of all the jealousy he’d cause with the fiddle I gave him. ‘Demonic instrument of Envy,’ I called it.”

“That was very wily of you, darling.” Aziraphale patted Crowley’s knee. (Crowley _almost_ managed not to blush.) “Though…if you only met him for a week, ninety years ago, I’m not sure that explains why you’re invited to his homegoing celebration.”

“Errr, yeahhhh, I sort of…checked in on him, a few times.”

The first time had been ten or so years later, just after the war. Crowley had been sent to the States to sow some sort of post-war discord (an assignment that was depressingly effortless to pull off), and managed to drop into rural Georgia.

Johnny had been busy. As it turned out, the extra feature Johnny had chosen for his fiddle had kicked in right away. A fellow who’d been having a rough go of it had been at that contest back in the ‘30s, and Johnny’s fiddling had given him the first boost he’d felt in months. The fellow had mentioned it to his sister, who managed a bar, and she’d offered Johnny a nightly gig. And if there was anything humans could be relied upon to consume, no matter the economic circumstances, it was alcohol and entertainment. Johnny’s parents had drastically revised their opinion of his “fiddling hobby” in the face of a small but steady stream of income.

A few years on, the jackass who owned Johnny’s family’s farm had died (“He was always going to come to a bad end. I didn’t have anything to do with it,” Crowley said to Aziraphale’s quizzical eyebrow. “…Eric might’ve, though.”). It had never been a very large farm, and Johnny’s family had been pretty well running the place even before the technical owner’s death. The owner’s son was probably also a jackass, but had abandoned him years before for a more exciting life in Atlanta, and had absolutely no desire to return to rural Georgia. After a few more years, and a war, Johnny’s mother ended up purchasing the entire farm, plus some adjoining land from the next farm over. (In addition to having—in Crowley’s opinion—alarmingly high moral standards, she had a wickedly good head for business.)

Johnny hadn’t been there for much of the land-buying business, but he _had_ helped finance it. The golden fiddle had come with him during his military service, and had earned a bit of a reputation on its own, since it _looked_ like an ordinary, slightly battered wooden fiddle but had survived three air-raids and a flooded trench utterly unscathed. More important, though, was the reputation earned by Johnny’s playing, which had resulted in several tours to entertain returning troops as the war wound down. (One or more of the Erics joined him occasionally; the “Triplet Fiddlers” had developed their own, very weird, cult following for a while.)

By the time Crowley turned up, the post-war touring was done, and Johnny had fallen in love somewhere along the way, gotten married, returned home to Georgia, and become a father. The baby was a few months old and didn’t (yet) show any signs of unusual talent other than some impressive lung capacity, but favored Crowley with a grin that was a point-for-point match to her father’s. Johnny talked Crowley into—well, not a fiddling contest, but a fiddling _session_ , anyway, up on the hillside where they’d met. Johnny’s father had long since rebuilt the old shed, larger and more sturdily, and the farm now took up more of the valley below them. The humidity and the screaming insects were the same, as was the way Johnny’s playing rippled across the hillside. They played into the night, though not nearly as long as the last time, since—

“Gotta go see about the baby,” said Johnny, a huge, hazy moon rising behind him. “Come on back whenever you like, devil.”

And Crowley had. He stopped by in the ‘50s, not announcing himself, just emerging on the hillside and waiting. Once dusk set in, he started playing, and Johnny made his way up not long after. He brought the “baby” with him—she now had two younger sisters, and had grown into a coolly competent not-quite-teenager who had _definitely_ inherited her father’s talent. Her name was Angie, short for Angela—

_“He named his daughter ‘Angel?’” Aziraphale asked._

_“Wellll…he said it was her mother’s choice.”_

That hadn’t stopped Johnny’s pointed smirk when he’d mentioned the name to the demon Crowley. In any case, he allowed her to stay up half an hour past her bedtime, and while she wasn’t _quite_ better than Crowley yet, the trajectory was very clear.

Johnny himself continued to play gigs and concerts, packing smaller venues and creating a dedicated following in the Georgia-Tennessee-Alabama circuit. He also picked up a steady stream of students (including at least one Eric), who came for lessons in the newly-refurbished farmhouse. By the time Crowley dropped by in the ‘60s, the family had added a studio wing to the house (taking up space that had once been a chicken coop, if Crowley remembered correctly), though Johnny still headed up the hillside for a session with Crowley by the shed. He kept a few stools up there now. Angie, now approaching her 20s, joined them as the sun set, and didn’t bat an eye that the white man with the sunglasses hadn’t aged a day since she’d seen him a decade ago.

In the ‘70s, the farm, though still operational, had taken a backseat to the new wing of the house, now considerably expanded and hung with a sign reading “The Northwest Georgia Folk Music Center.” Johnny taught not just lessons but classes, and various siblings and children did cooking and craft demonstrations. Other musicians visited for events; schoolchildren arrived in busloads for field trips. The farm across the way did a stint as a commune, and Johnny’s family bought it as soon as the young hippies in residence became slightly-aging hippies, who had started to reflect that an office job might have some appeal after all. (Crowley suspected that the mosquitos had a lot to do with that.) By the ‘80s, Angie had renovated the former commune and had moved her growing branch of the family in. Crowley didn’t try visiting either house; he lurked on the hillside, where a paved patio had now been installed in front of the old shed, and started playing his fiddle when the sun went down. Johnny joined him first, and then Angie once the kids’ homework was completed and the kitchen cleaned to her satisfaction.

By the late ‘90s, the stools on the hillside patio had been upgraded to comfortable wicker seats, and by the early 2000s, a set of broad, shallow steps had been installed into the slope. Johnny, in his ‘80s, made his way up them slowly, then ripped a tune from his fiddle as if he were still 15.

“You go on and play, devil,” he said as the night deepened. “I’mma listen for a while.” And he did, leaning back in his seat and closing his eyes, until Angie fussed at him and helped him down the stairs and, presumably, into bed. Crowley stayed for a while longer, moving through tune after tune they’d played over the years.

The next time Crowley was in the States was somewhere past 2015, with the threat of the end of the world looming ever closer. The Dowlings took a stateside trip, and Crowley convinced them (with very little difficulty) that they needed Nanny Ashtoreth to come along. He took a night away to slither to a hill in Georgia, miracle his fiddle into his hands, and play into the evening.

It was Angie, instead of Johnny, who emerged alone from the house below to join him.

Crowley’s playing faltered, but—

“He’s listening,” she said, nodding toward the house, where a window showed a dim light. “Asked you to keep playing.”

“Asked me, did he?” Crowley echoed.

Angie gave him the grin he knew. “He said, ‘you tell that devil to keep on.’”

And Crowley did, long after Angie had headed for her own house, nearly until the sun came up and he knew he had to go, pretending that he didn’t know that this hillside and everything else might burn away before he could return.

Aziraphale laid a hand on Crowley’s knee. “I believe we’re landing, dear.”

And they were, together and safe in a world that had gone on against all odds. Crowley wished for a moment that he could have told Johnny that he’d outlived Armageddon. It would have made him laugh.

The homegoing itself was—well. Crowley wasn’t exactly an expert in the area, but presumably it was appropriate for a celebration of a century-plus life to go on for hours.

It was held on the grounds of the Folk Center—the first time Crowley had seen it by daylight—in a fleet of white folding chairs, with spreading white awnings at the front for the family. Crowley and Aziraphale stayed near the back; gospel choirs tended to make Crowley itch if he got too close. There was, of course, a gospel choir. And there were enough fiddlers to fill an orchestra on their own (was there a word for a ridiculously large number of fiddles?), of every age and persuasion imaginable. There was a video, which must have been filmed decades ago, of veterans speaking of how Johnny’s music had been one of the first things that welcomed them back home. They wiped their eyes a good deal. Crowley didn’t need to, of course, so it was entirely unnecessary for Aziraphale to squeeze his hand in that quietly comforting way. There were videos of Johnny—telling stories, playing solos, playing with his students. More fiddlers played; the choir sang; the crowd in the chairs sang and clapped. Not Crowley, of course.

Fine; he might have tapped his foot a bit.

Eventually, the service wound to a close—well, _danced_ to a close, more like—and the family drove away in a long procession to the graveside. The remainder of the crowd, including Crowley and Aziraphale, meandered across the grounds, visited folk center exhibits, stopped by the gift shop. (Some people might have said that the shop should have been closed for the day, out of respect to Johnny. Johnny was absolutely not one of those people.)

It took Aziraphale approximately eight seconds to locate the food-and-candy section of the gift shop, and a good deal longer to discuss the options with the woman running the counter, long enough that the family’s cars began to trickle back in from the graveside service. Crowley left Aziraphale surrounded by food samples and deep in a conversation about additives in homemade jellies, and sauntered around to the back of the house and up the hillside staircase. The shed had been updated again, he noted. He gazed across the farm and the folk center below him, out to the hills rippling away to the south, a patchwork of forest and farmland and a few small but ambitious housing developments. It was a Hell of a—a Heav—an impressive view. But he found his eyes drawn back to the farmhouse, to the window he knew had been Johnny’s, which he’d kept open on thick Georgia evenings to listen to the nighttime chorus and, every now and then, a fiddling demon.

Crowley’s fiddle was in his hand almost before he’d thought of it.

He began playing without planning, whatever his bow and strings wanted to produce. It was a waltz, one he’d learned from Johnny decades ago. A good choice, he thought. Not an attempt to compare to the rousing choruses of the service earlier, just a quiet tribute, a memorial but not a sad one.

[quotharaven](https://soundcloud.com/julia-p-78777793) · [Memory Waltz](https://soundcloud.com/julia-p-78777793/memory-waltz)

He played for a while, improvised on the tune in ways that might have made Johnny nod, and kept playing when two figures emerged from the house below.

Angie moved slowly up the shallow steps, a fiddle (well, _the_ fiddle) in one hand, and the other on the shoulder of a kid, ten or so years old, who walked patiently and quietly by her side.

“Miss Angie,” Crowley said, stopping his playing as she reached the patio and settled herself into a chair, with a comfortable creaking of old wicker. Crowley remained standing, bowing enough to amuse but not annoy her. (Normally, of course, he was firmly in favor of annoying humans, but he wasn’t quite in the mood at the moment.)

“I thought you might make your way up here,” she replied. “It’s been a minute since the last time.”

“Y’going to join me?” He nodded at the fiddle. The golden sheen was visible to his demonic eyes, under the illusion of wood.

“Oh, I can still get a good tune going,” she grinned. Crowley knew that grin. She fitted it easily under her chin and rippled out a quick melody to demonstrate. “But,” she went on, “I figure it’s time for someone else to take a turn.” She tilted her head toward the kid, who’d been watching them, silently quizzical.

“Really?” he asked, his eyes widening. “Big John’s fiddle?”

“This is my great-grandson Tre,” she told Crowley. “Johnny the third. He’s been playing since he was three. Can’t keep him away from it.” The unabashed pride in her voice would have made Aziraphale smile soppily, but of course did not do the same to the demon Crowley.

“Were you one of Big John’s students?” Tre asked politely, though his entire focus was on the fiddle.

“Um,” said Crowley, remembering being thoroughly bested by a 15-year-old on another thick Georgia night, “yeah, pretty much.”

“Go on, child,” said Angie. “See what you can do.”

He took it reverently, his eyes still huge, drew the bow across it for a tentative note, and—ah. There was that smile.

And the music rang out like fire across the mountainside.


End file.
